Transcription
Translator: Ahmed AbouZaid
Reviewer: Anwar Dafa-Alla
To those in the back, can you hear me clearly? Good, excellent.
Have you ever been so preoccupied with a question that it becomes a part of your thinking? Perhaps even a part of you as a person? Well, I've had a question on my mind for many years, and that is how can we speed up the process of learning? It's a truly interesting question because if you can learn faster, you'll spend less time in school. And if you could learn really fast, you might not need to go to school at all. Now, when I was young, school was okay, but... I often noticed that school was a barrier to the process of education, so I had this question in my mind: How do we learn faster?
And this began when I was very, very young, when I was 11 years old, I wrote a letter to researchers in the Soviet Union, asking them about Hypnopaedia, which is learning during sleep, where you get a tape recorder, put it next to your bed, and then play it during the night while you're sleeping, and you're supposed to learn from this. Good idea, but unfortunately, it doesn't work! However, learning during sleep opened doors for researchers in other areas, and we had a great discovery about education that started with that first question. From there, I became passionate about psychology, and I've been involved in psychology in many different ways for the rest of my life up to this moment.
In 1981, I went to China and decided that I would be at the level of native Chinese speakers within two years. Now, you have to understand, in 1981, everyone thought that Chinese was extremely difficult, really, and that a Western person might study for 10 years or more and not even come close to being good at it. And I also had a different idea, which was: take all the conclusions from psychology research up to that time and apply them to the process of learning, which was really wonderful, as I became fluent in Mandarin Chinese within 6 months, and it took a little longer to reach the native speaker level. But I looked around and saw all these people from different countries struggling terribly with Chinese. I saw Chinese people struggling terribly to learn English and other languages. And so the question became: How can we help ordinary adults learn a new language quickly, easily, and efficiently?
Now, that's a really important question in today's world. We have enormous challenges with our environment, we have enormous challenges with social breakdown, with wars, and all the things that are happening. And if we can't communicate, we're going to have difficulty solving these problems. So we need to be able to speak each other's languages. This is very, very important. The question then is: How can we do that? Well, it's really easy. Look around and find the people who are already doing it. Find the cases that are already working for them, and then you can identify the principles and apply them. It's called modeling, and I've been looking at language learning and modeling language learning for 15 to 20 years now. And my conclusion and observations from that are that any adult can learn a second language fluently within 6 months.
Now when I say that, most people think I'm crazy, that this is impossible. So; let me remind everyone of the history of human progress. It's all about pushing our boundaries. In 1950, everyone thought it was impossible to run a mile in four minutes. And then Roger Bannister did it. In 1956, and from there it became shorter and shorter. A hundred years ago, everyone thought that heavy things couldn't fly. Well, they can, and we all know that. How can heavy things fly? We reorganized materials using principles we learned from observing nature, birds in this case. And today we've gone even further... we've gone further, so a car can fly. You can buy one of these cars for a few hundred thousand dollars. Now we have in this world cars that can fly. And there are different ways of flying that we learned from squirrels, so all you need to do is copy what a flying squirrel does. Make a suit called a wingsuit, and there you go, you can fly like a squirrel.
Now, most people, many people, and I won't say all people, but many people think they can't draw. However, there are some basic principles, five principles, that you can apply to learn to draw, and you can actually learn to draw in five days. So, if you draw this way, you can learn these principles in five days and apply them, and after five days you can draw something like this. Now, I know this is true because that was my first drawing, and after five days of applying these principles, that's what I could do. And I looked at this and then realized: "Wow! So that's what I look like when I concentrate intensely. My brain is exploding." So, anyone can learn to draw in five days, and in the same way, with the same logic, anyone can learn a second language in six months. How? There are five principles and seven actions. There might be more, but these are certainly the basics.
And before I go into them, I just want to talk about two myths. I want to debunk two myths. The first is that you need talent. Let me tell you about Zoe. Zoe came from Australia to Holland, and she was trying to learn Dutch. She struggled terribly, terribly... she struggled a lot, and finally, people said, "You're completely useless," "You're not talented," "Give up," "You're a waste of time." And she was extremely frustrated. Then she discovered these five principles, moved to Brazil, applied them, and within 6 months she was speaking Portuguese fluently. Therefore, talent doesn't matter.
People also think that immersion in a new country is the way to learn a language. But look in Hong Kong. Look at all these Westerners who have been there for 10 years and haven't spoken a single word of Chinese. Look at all these Chinese people living in America, Britain, Australia, Canada. They've been there for 10 to 20 years and have never spoken English. Immersion in itself doesn't work. Why? Because a drowning person can't learn to swim! When you don't speak a language, you're like a baby. And if you put yourself in the middle of a context where all the adults are talking about things above your level, you won't learn.
So, what are the five principles you need to pay attention to? First: The four words, attention, meaning, relationship, and memory, and the connection between them is extremely important, especially when you talk about learning. Come with me on a journey through a forest. You're walking through the forest and you see something like this... little signs on a tree. Maybe you pay attention, maybe you don't. You walk another 50 meters and you see this... You have to pay attention. After another 50 meters, if you haven't paid attention, you see this... And at this point, you will pay attention. And I learned that this... is important, it's relevant because it means, and anything that is relevant, any information related to your survival is the thing that you will pay attention to and therefore you will remember. If it's related to your personal goals, then you will pay attention to it. If it's relevant, you will pay attention to it. So, the first rule, the first principle of learning a language is to focus on the content of the language that is relevant to you.
And that leads us to tools. We master tools by using them, and we learn tools faster when they are relevant to us. So let me share my story. A keyboard is a tool. Writing Chinese in a certain way, there are ways to do that. This is the tool. I had a colleague several years ago. She was going to night school; Tuesday night, Thursday night, two hours each time, and practicing at home. She spent nine months and didn't learn how to write Chinese. And one night, we had a crisis. We had 48 hours to deliver a training manual in Chinese. And she got the job, and I can assure you, in 48 hours, she learned how to write Chinese because it was relevant to her, it was meaningful, and important. She was using a tool to create value. So the second principle of learning a language is to use the language as a tool for communication from day one, just like a child does.
When I first arrived in China, I didn't speak a single word of Chinese. And in my second week, I decided to take a train. I spent eight hours sitting in the dining car talking to a guard on the train. For some reason, he seemed interested in me, and we talked all night in Chinese. He was drawing pictures, making gestures with his hands and facial expressions, and little by little, I understood more and more. But the amazing thing was, after two weeks, when people were speaking Chinese around me, I understood some of it, and I didn't make any effort to learn it. What happened was, I absorbed it that night on the train, which leads us to the third principle. When you understand the message first, then you acquire the language without realizing it. And this is really documented now, and this is called comprehensible input. There's 20 to 30 years of research on this. Stephen Krashen is a pioneer in this field, and he published all sorts of different studies, and this is just one of them. The purple bars show scores on different language tests. The people in purple are people who learned by grammar and formal study. The people in green are those who learned by comprehensible input. So, comprehension works. Comprehension is the key, and learning a language is not about accumulating a lot of knowledge. In many, many cases, it's about physiological (organic) training.
I know a woman from Taiwan who did well in English during school. She got distinctions all the way through college, got distinctions. She went to the United States and found that she couldn't understand what people were saying. And people started asking her, "Are you deaf?" And she was! Deaf in English. Because we have filters in our brains that filter out sounds we are used to and filter out sounds from languages we don't know. And if you can't hear it, you can't understand it, and if you can't understand it, you won't learn it. So you have to be able to hear these sounds. And there are ways to do that, but they are physiological exercises. Speech uses muscles. You have 43 muscles in your face, you have to organize them in a way that enables you to make sounds that others can understand. If you do any new sport for several days, you know how your body feels? It hurts? If your face hurts, you're doing it the right way.
And the last principle is state. The psycho-physical state. If you are sad, or angry, or anxious, or resentful, you will not learn! Period. If you are happy, relaxed, in an alpha state of mind, and curious, you will learn really fast. And specifically, you need to be tolerant of ambiguity. If you are one of those people who needs to understand 100 percent of every word they hear, you will get bored, because you will be extremely frustrated all the time, because you are not perfect. If you are tolerant of knowing some things and not knowing others, just pay attention to what you do understand, you will be fine, relaxed, and you will learn quickly.
So, based on these five principles, what are the seven actions you need to take? Number one: Listen a lot. I call it brain immersion. You put yourself in a context where you hear tons and tons and tons of a language, and it doesn't matter if you understand it or not. You listen to the rhythms, the patterns that repeat, you listen to the things that stand out. (Chinese) Bao na zi. (Arabic) So, just immerse your brain in it.
The second action is to know the meaning first, even before knowing the words. Try this: "Well, how do you do that? I don't know the words!" Well, you understand the meaning of these different situations. Human communication is body language in many, many ways, a lot of body language. From body language, you can understand a lot of communication, and therefore, you understand, you acquire through comprehensible input. And you can use patterns that you already know. If you speak Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese and go to Vietnam, you will understand 60 percent of what they say to you in daily conversation, because Vietnamese is 30 percent Mandarin and 30 percent Cantonese.
The third action: Start mixing. Maybe you've never thought about it, but if you know 10 verbs, 10 nouns, and 10 adjectives, you can say 1,000 different things. Language is a creative process. What do young children do? Well, "Me," "potty," "now." Well, that's how they communicate. So start mixing, create, and have fun with it. It doesn't have to be perfect; the important thing is that it works. And when you do that, you focus on the essence of it. What does that mean? Well, any language is high-frequency content. In English, 1,000 words cover 85 percent of anything you will say in daily communication. 3,000 words give you 98 percent of anything you will say in daily conversation. If you get 3,000 words, you speak the language. The rest is additional refinement. And when you start with a new language, start with your toolbox. Week number one, in your new language, you say things like, "How do you say that?" "I didn't understand." "Repeat that, please." "What does that mean?" In all your target languages, you use it as a tool. Make it useful to you. It's relevant to learning other things about the language. By week two, you should be saying things like, "I," "this," "you," "that," "give," "you know," "hot." Simple pronouns, simple nouns, simple verbs, simple adjectives. You communicate like a small child. And by week three or four, you start "gluing words." "Although," "but," "therefore." These are the connectors that link the language together and allow you to create more complex meanings. At that stage, you are speaking.
And when you do that, you must get a language parent. If you look at how children and parents interact, you will understand what this means. When a child speaks, they use simple words, simple structures. Sometimes they sound very strange, sometimes they have strange pronunciation. Other people outside the family don't understand them. But the parents understand. And so the child has a safe environment, and they gain confidence. The parents speak to the child using body language and simple language. They know the child understands. So you have a safe comprehensible input environment. We know that works; otherwise, none of you would speak your mother tongue. So get a language parent, which is someone who cares about you personally, who will communicate with you naturally, but cares about helping you understand the message. There are four rules for a language parent. Spouses are not good at this! Okay? But the four rules are: First, they will work hard to understand what you mean, even if you are wrong. Second, they will not correct your mistakes. Third, they will inform you of what they understand from what you say so that you can respond appropriately and understand their feedback. And then they will use words you know.
The sixth thing you need to do is copy the face. You need to make the muscles work correctly so that you can make sounds in a way that people understand you. There are some things you do. One is to feel the sensation, and feel the sound, which means you have a feedback loop happening in your face. But ideally, if you can look at a native speaker and notice how they use their faces, let your subconscious mind absorb the rules, then you will be able to use them. And if you can't look at a native speaker of the language, you can use things like... (female voice) singing, a song, king, stung, hung. (Chris Lonsdale) And the last idea here, the last action you need to take is something I call "direct connection." What does that mean? Well, most people learn a second language by somehow taking the words of their mother tongue and the new language and navigating between them repeatedly in their minds to try and remember these words. And this is completely ineffective. What you need to do is realize that everything you know is an image in your mind. It's a feeling. If you're talking about fire, you can smell the smoke, you can hear the crackling, you can see the flames. So what you do is, you go inside these perceptions and all that memory, and you come out from another path. So I call it "same box, different path." You come out of this path and you build it up over time. You become more skilled at connecting new sounds to these images you already have in your inner mind. And over time, you naturally become better at this process, where it happens unconsciously.
So, there are five principles you need to work with, and seven actions. If you do any of them, you will improve. And remember that these things are in your hands as a learner. Do them all, and you will be fluent in a second language within six months. Thank you. (Applause)